Work Order SLA: Time Limits and Delay Justifications

A utility work order passes through a chain of stages before a contractor can bill for it: site survey (Kashfia), an excavation permit when needed, execution in Projects or Connections, quality, the achievement certificate, drawing and the extract. Every idle day in one stage delays everything after it, including the payment claim.

A work order SLA makes that delay visible: a time limit for each stage, and a written justification when it is missed. Here is how to design one that your teams will actually respect.

What is a work order SLA (tazmeen)?

A work order SLA is the number of days a work order may stay in each stage before it is flagged as overdue. The Arabic term is tazmeen (التزمين). It applies the service level agreement idea to each stage separately, not to the order as a whole.

Instead of asking “when will this order be done?”, you ask “is this stage within its limit?” If not, the next question is “why?”, and the answer is recorded as a delay justification with evidence.

Stage time limit

The allowed number of days for one stage of a work order.

Time limit exceeded

The order has stayed in the stage past its limit and counts as overdue.

Delay justification

A written reason for the overrun, backed by a document or photo.

Relay

Moving the order to the next stage once the current stage is complete.

Receipt

The moment the responsible user claims the order in a stage.

Why does every stage need a time limit?

A single deadline tells you an order is late, not where it got stuck. Each stage has its own owner: survey, permits, execution crews, quality inspectors, certificate and drawing staff, then finance. With a limit and an owner per stage, a delay becomes a question for a specific person, not a general complaint.

• Ownership: every overdue day belongs to a known stage and team.
• Bottlenecks: overdue orders piling up in one stage point to a staffing gap or a recurring obstacle.
• External timelines: stages that wait on others, such as the municipality for permits, need limits that allow for those outside timelines.
• Cash flow: an order reaches the extract only after the earlier stages close, so a slow quality, certificate or drawing stage holds back payment.
• A defensible record: dated justifications document what happened, for any later review.

Before setting limits, agree on what happens in each stage and who owns it. Our guide to utility work order stages walks through them.

Should the count start at relay or at receipt?

This first decision changes what the number means. Counting from relay starts the clock when the order arrives in a stage, whether or not anyone has picked it up. Counting from receipt starts it when the responsible user claims the order.

It also interacts with the relay mode. With automatic relay, the order goes straight into the next stage’s list for one of its users to claim. With manual relay, it waits in a distribution basket until a dispatcher assigns it. Either way, days can pass before anyone picks it up.

Neither is right for everyone. If you count from receipt, track the waiting time before receipt as a separate indicator. If you count from relay, ask each justification to say whether the delay came before or after the order was claimed.

How do you set realistic limits per stage?

Realistic limits come from your data, not from wishful targets. Set them too tight and most orders turn red, so people stop reacting. Set them too loose and problems stay hidden until they pile up.

1. Collect actual durations

   From completed orders, find the typical time each stage takes, per work type if you can.

2. Separate internal from external

   Split stages your team controls from those that wait on others, such as permits or power disconnection.

3. Anchor on published timelines

   For official processes, treat the published timeline as the floor and add your preparation time.

4. Choose counting and relay modes

   Decide whether the clock runs from relay or receipt, and whether each stage relays automatically or through a basket.

5. Pilot, then review

   Run the limits for a while, review the overdue share and its reasons, then adjust the limit or fix the cause.

Published timelines that help anchor some stages:

Under FIDIC-based contracts, the payment window opens only once supporting documents arrive, so every day lost before the extract pushes it back. For the claim itself, see our guide to the contractor extract.

What are delay justifications and which documents support them?

A delay justification is a written explanation, recorded when an order exceeds its stage limit, stating the cause and attaching proof. Write it while the obstacle is fresh, not months later during an extract or penalty review.

Before accepting a justification, check it against this list:

• The cause is specific, not a vague phrase such as “site conditions”.
• The date the obstacle began is stated and matches the stage dates.
• The party linked to the obstacle is named.
• A dated document or photo is attached.
• The corrective action is stated, with an expected date.
• It is written by the user responsible for the stage.

How do you catch overdue orders before they pile up?

Without a regular review, an overdue order may surface only when someone complains or a claim is disputed. The fix is a short daily review, not a post-mortem.

• Each morning, review overdue orders stage by stage, oldest first.
• Watch orders nearing their limit; acting early beats justifying later.
• Track how long orders wait in baskets and stage lists before anyone claims them, especially if you count from receipt.
• Compare order ages in time buckets; growth in the oldest buckets is an early warning.
• Group delay reasons weekly. A recurring cause needs a fix, not another justification.
• Check the excavation permit’s expiry against the execution limit.

A dashboard is the natural place for this review. See our work order dashboard guide for the indicators, and excavation permit tracking for permit follow-up.

What mistakes undermine stage time limits?

• One limit for every stage: a survey and an execution stage do not take the same time, so a single limit is unfair to one and too lenient on the other.
• Limits without justifications: if nobody explains an overrun, the red number becomes background noise.
• Justifications without attachments: text alone is hard to verify months later.
• Ignoring waiting time: an order sitting for days in a basket or stage list is already late, even before the receipt clock starts.
• Limits nobody revisits: new crews or a new work mix make old limits unrealistic.

How does ELX apply stage time limits and delay justifications?

ELX is a bilingual cloud (SaaS) system hosted and operated by Matrix. It runs in the browser, with no servers needed on your side, and carries each work order for electricity-network contractors from registration to archive. Stage time limits are part of its work order management, not a month-end report.

• A limit per stage: in the permissions and settings area, the administrator sets each stage’s allowed days, relay mode (automatic, or manual through a distribution basket), mandatory notes or attachments, and whether an overrun requires a justification.
• Counting mode: the general settings decide whether the clock runs from relay or from receipt.
• Justification before relay: an overdue order with a mandatory justification cannot be relayed until the justification and its supporting files are entered. Users can save it alone, or save and relay together.
• Overdue flags: overdue orders appear in stage lists with a delay-justifications action and are colour-marked in distribution screens with a legend; survey orders can be filtered by status to show only those past their limit.
• Days remaining: stage screens show days remaining or overdue against the order’s expected duration.
• Context for dispatchers: delay justifications are visible on the same distribution screen used to assign the order.

For managers, the dashboard and reports show each stage, from work order to drawing, as within-limit versus late; clicking the late slice lists those orders and who holds each. The daily digest, sent on Telegram and on WhatsApp when enabled, groups order ages into buckets (0–2, 3–7, 8–14 and over 14 days) and shows the load per stage.

For the paper trail, the full work order report shows each stage’s relay and receipt dates, and a manual stage change requires a note, logged with the old value, new value and date.

If your stages work differently, Matrix customizes screens, reports and stages to each contractor’s needs. Request a demo to see how the time-limit and delay-justification settings fit your own stages.